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Imagine you live in a liberal democracy which has decent economic equality and social opportunity, has not been to war recently, has privacy laws, and is taking

by retrac 5y ago

Imagine you live in a liberal democracy which has decent economic equality and social opportunity, has not been to war recently, has privacy laws, and is taking aggressive action on climate change. Yes, there are a few of those! But even in those countries, it's not that hard to find some people who are in favour of the violent overthrow of liberalism.

pasabagi 5y ago
Well, I think the argument goes that these liberal countries are a vital part of a broader international system, that has no privacy laws, is not doing anything about climate change, and is at war all the time: in fact, a system that's basically a combination death pact / torture machine. Living in a gated community gives you less personal motivation to radicalism, but the broader, more general grounds are still there.
deleted 5y ago
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mandmandam 5y ago
That's a fair point, though those countries and the people in them are still very much affected by global climate change, global surveillance, refugees from wars and proxy wars, etc, with their causative origin in other countries. And, I doubt that the respondents in this study were from those countries. It seems that, at least in the researchers second round, participants were selected to represent the US (I don't have access to the full study so can't say more). I also doubt that the researcher took any, much less all, of the valid reasons for desiring dismantlement of neo-liberal power structures into account when building up these "iterative" profiles. I do think LWA is worth researching, but without being able to see how they're defining "political violence", or "left wing", or how these aspects are weighted, it's hard to judge the value of their data. I think their conclusion sounds about right, for many on the so-called left in America these days - “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behaviour, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy and moral absolutism.” However, in most other Western countries Democrats are considered quite right-wing, for the exact above reasons.

by retrac 5y ago

pasabagi 5y ago

Well, I think the argument goes that these liberal countries are a vital part of a broader international system, that has no privacy laws, is not doing anything about climate change, and is at war all the time: in fact, a system that's basically a combination death pact / torture machine. Living in a gated community gives you less personal motivation to radicalism, but the broader, more general grounds are still there.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mandmandam 5y ago

That's a fair point, though those countries and the people in them are still very much affected by global climate change, global surveillance, refugees from wars and proxy wars, etc, with their causative origin in other countries. And, I doubt that the respondents in this study were from those countries. It seems that, at least in the researchers second round, participants were selected to represent the US (I don't have access to the full study so can't say more). I also doubt that the researcher took any, much less all, of the valid reasons for desiring dismantlement of neo-liberal power structures into account when building up these "iterative" profiles. I do think LWA is worth researching, but without being able to see how they're defining "political violence", or "left wing", or how these aspects are weighted, it's hard to judge the value of their data. I think their conclusion sounds about right, for many on the so-called left in America these days - “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behaviour, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy and moral absolutism.” However, in most other Western countries Democrats are considered quite right-wing, for the exact above reasons.